“Go away. I’m not ready to let this go yet.”
“Got it. I like the ‘yet’ in that statement and now I shall put Will back on. I love you, babe.”
“I don’t love you as much as you love me.”
She laughs and puts Will back on. “So that’s all sorted, then?”
I roll my eyes even though he can’t see me. “You are such a boy.”
“I’ve never argued with that fact.”
“If I end up in jail, will you bring the girls to visit me?”
“No. You should do everything to avoid going to jail.”
“I can’t guarantee anything. Not today.”
“Jess,” he turns serious, “I don’t know what the fuck made Jack do what he did, and I don’t really want to be the one to say this because I’m not sure I can forget the pain he caused you, but men do some fucked-up shit sometimes in the name of love. I can only guess his mind wasn’t in a great place when he did what he did.”
“Ugh, Will Johnson, why do you have to be my person? Why can’t you just agree with me when I need you to?”
“Because that’s not what we do.”
I force all the cantankerous air from my lungs and sit up in my bed. “I love you, but right now, not as much as usual.”
“I can deal with that.”
“Don’t forget you’re on dog duty. I need one for when I come home.”
“How about I just loan you my kids for a few nights?”
“I’ll take them too.”
“I love you, Jess. Talk to him.”
“I will. After I stab him a few times.”
We end the call and I throw my phone down onto the bed and proceed to embrace my anger some more. I’ve spent all night embracing it and am nowhere near ready to let it go. Jack better be ready for me today.
He’s waiting for me when I emerge from my bedroom fifteen minutes after my call with Will and Mira. He’s dressed for our run, wearing that dark grey T-shirt I love. Today, though, I fucking hate it. I hate everything about him today.
I stalk right on past him, out to where Axe has his guys waiting for us. There are less paparazzi hanging around, but they’re still here.
“You ready to go?” Axe says.
I put my AirPods in and nod as Jack steps next to me. “Yes.”
I don’t look at Jack. I just start running.
He makes a smart decision when he doesn’t attempt to engage me during our run. He also doesn’t argue with me when we reach our usual turn-around point and I insist on not turning around yet.
We run for just over two hours today and it’s nowhere near long enough for me to rid this furious energy from my body. The worst thing is that I can’t use my own fucking shower when we return to the house. And since I refuse to use Jack’s, because I don’t want to be up close with his personal space and belongings, I have to use the outside shower, and that involves Jack sitting outside guarding me from fucking spiders.
“I don’t need you to guard me,” I say as he takes up residence on that same chair he sat on last night before telling me he didn’t stick his dick in another woman. I hate that chair too.
“Yeah, you do.”
I glare at his back. “You don’t know what I need, Jack. And clearly you never have.”
“Today I know you need me to defend you from spiders, so I’m staying right here.”
I glare at him some more before turning on the shower.
I’m halfway through my shower when he says, “Just so you know, I’m not going anywhere. I expect you to stay angry with me for a while, and to fight with me over everything for just as long, but you should expect me to not walk away from this.”
“You should expect me to get a vibrator. And a dog.”
“Sweetheart, I’m shocked you don’t already own a vibrator.”
“Oh, I meant I’m getting twenty new ones to add to my collection. And I don’t ever intend on letting anyone else use them on me.”
“So this dog you’re getting, what kind will it be?”
“The kind that hates men as much as I do.”
I flick off the shower and dry myself. After wrapping the towel around me, I stride past him and into my bedroom. Throughout all this, as well as throughout our conversation, I resist the urge to simultaneously scream at him and slap him.
I have never felt as angry as I do with him right now.
I’ve also never felt as conflicted.
He didn’t cheat on me.
But he gave up on us.
We wasted so much fucking time.
I work at the dining table all day while Jack makes a lot of fucking noise in the bathroom. Ashton and I go back and forth on some work problems, one of them being the New York meetings I rescheduled to next Monday. He knows he won’t be finished in London in time for that, and after a lot of discussion, and back and forth with Beckett Pearce and Jameson Fox, we all reschedule enough things to make the meetings happen the following week. If we need to move these dates again, I may finally take to Ashton with that fishing spear.
Just after four, Bob calls over with some more cookies baked by his wife for Jack.
“Thanks, mate,” Jack says, placing the plate on the kitchen counter. Eyeing me at the dining table, he says, “I didn’t get many of the last batch. Jessica loved them more than I do.”
Bob looks at me. He still doesn’t seem sure of me. I’m fairly certain I confused the hell out of him when we met.
“I will admit I ate my fair share of the last batch,” I say. “I may need the recipe off Mavis.”
Bob’s eyes light up at the mention of his wife. I wonder how long they’ve been married. I bet they were childhood sweethearts. “I’ll tell her. She’s given that recipe to just about every woman around here.”
I smile. “Everyone loves those cookies, huh?”
He returns my smile. I think we’ve found common ground now. His wife. “They do. There’s nothing Mavis bakes that everyone doesn’t love.”
“Have you been fishing again, Bob?” I ask.
“No.” He turns to Jack. “I was hoping you might want to go out again this week.”
“Tomorrow morning?” Jack says.
“Yeah. I’ll get Mavis to knock us up some breaky to take.”
“Sounds good.”
“Right,” Bob says, glancing back at me, “I’ll get out of your hair.”
“Thanks for the cookies,” I say.
Jack sees him out and then comes back. “I thought I might fire up the barbie this arvo. We’ve got that steak in the freezer that we bought last week.”
I keep my eyes on my laptop. “I don’t want steak. And I’m not eating with you.”
“I accept that you don’t want to eat with me, but you have to eat something. What do you feel like?”
“I’ll make my own dinner.”
“Jessica,” he starts, but I cut him off.
Looking up at him, I say, “No, Jack. You can’t tell me you didn’t do the thing that caused us to break up and think that everything will be magically fixed. I’m angry with you in a way I never have been, so I need to process all of that before I can even begin thinking about what comes next.”